I was confronted with a beanie weenie meal (plus some other weird things) last spring after a pre-Memorial day drive up to the moomincabin. A drive that culminated with SLEET, mind you. Sleet at the end of May? Really? Beanie weenies? For dinner? Really?

The outdoor temperature was in the 50s that day so the sleet was some sort of weird upper atmosphere phenomenon and the roads were not slippery thank you very much. But. Beanie Weenies? Those are little mini-cans of baked beans with sliced hot dogs in them. No thank you. My plan was to order either takeout pizza or something from Pickles and Pickles it was, whitefish baskets.

The book? Barbara Kingsolver’s latest, Demon Copperhead. The title sounded a bit like something Jeff Vandermeer might write, think Hummingbird Salamander, a great book BTW! I love Kingsolver and this book is not disappointing me. A trip through the more sordid parts of the foster child system.

To be clear, I have known some foster parents who took GOOD care of the children entrusted to them and even adopted. The kid in this book is not being treated well. The folks who take him on are desperately poor themselves and the $500 a month (in the book, not sure what people actually get paid and it probably varies) does not get directed in any way, shape, or form to the kid they are supposed to be fostering. Alas, I suspect this kind of thing happens more often than not.

I’m not sure I could ever have fostered children. It wasn’t a matter of money and believe me if I HAD fostered, the kids would’ve been treated well. Fed and clothed and cleaned and not relegated to sleep in a “dog room” or whatever. I just don’t think I could have handled any more than my own children. And I had a super supportive husband and several of those proverbial villages to help me.

I could pontificate more on this but I don’t have the words tonight.

A new generation takes over? I can’t count how many times I have raked the leaves at the Hoton Lake Group Home. It has to be done every year and I always had a good time helping with it. We would rake the leaves onto big sheets of plastic and then drag them across the street and dump them into the swamp. I’m not sure if that strategy is environmentally correct but we were carrying on a long-standing tradition and didn’t know any better.

I haven’t done the leaves in a few years now. At some point in time my career got a little more intense and then the pandemic hit and I haven’t really wanted to hang out at the group home if there were other people there. Although I HAVE gone there a couple times and did not get covid, or not that I know of anyway. Summer 2021 with a TON of people and summer 2022 with one of our Colorado nieces and her cute little kiddos.

This year! My beach urchins and their significant others schlepped up there for a long weekend and they have done the leaves! At least the bulk of them. There may be a bit more to do in a couple weeks. But still. Leaf raking weekends were probably fun for my kids but even though they could be helpful, they were KIDS, and therefore got bored with the whole project before it was finished.

We greatly appreciate their help this year but we do NOT expect them to handle this huge chore every year. It worked out this time and they had a BEAUTIFUL weekend up there. Cheers!

Lots of interesting (and bizarre) news today. Mr. Musk and Twitter? Hmmm. I was hoping that would not actually happen but it has…

I dunno. He is clearly not an idiot. He has done some good things. The Tesla electric vee-hickle (arguably because there are apparently battery issues)? Starlink? I don’t totally understand Starlink but it sounds like a step in the right direction for internet access if I have it right and I certainly may not. But then there was that tube or tunnel or whatever it was. I don’t think that worked out all that well.

Twitter? Is Mr. Musk an appropriate person to be the chief twit (yes I think he is calling himself that) of a social media company? First off, what *is* Twitter all about. I have been on Twitter since 2007 or so. At first I wasn’t friends with anyone I knew and most news sources didn’t have a presence. It was just me and some guys I did not know at all. I haven’t seen tweets from them in forever so I wonder if they are still alive. I also did not interact with them.

Eventually I connected with some family members and friends. None of us really tweet any more. I use Twitter mostly as a news feed. It isn’t perfect for that but I can follow various sources and pick and choose what to read.

I am struggling with the concept of “free speech” and content moderation on social media platforms. I believe that people should be able to say whatever they want to. I struggle with the fact that it’s very easy to “share” or retweet or whatever an article that the sharer hasn’t read or if they have read it maybe they don’t have the critical thinking skills to understand it. Responsibility and accountability need to go hand in hand with free speech at least in this day and age of fast information if I can call it that.

I am struggling with the idea that the Orange Baboon may be allowed back onto the Twitter platform (but we’ll see). I followed him on Twitter and it is one of the big reasons I disagreed with his presidency. From the getgo? WORD SALAD! Yes. He was totally incapable of pulling an intelligible sentence out of his brain. And then there was all the name-calling and just plain nastiness, often directed toward people who *supported* him. And lies lies lies. Shining a light up your ass will kill covid? C’mon. If you say something loud enough and repeat it umpteen bazillion times people will believe it. Right? Not me. He was and is a narcissistic nut case who cares only about himself.

Except many people did believe his bullshit and still do. When I talk to MAGAts that I know, I sometimes ask, “Did you read his tweets?” Oh no, they always say, I don’t “do” Twitter. Well la-di-dah. Sorry but you shoulda been reading his tweets. That’s how he communicates with his “base” and a lot of those people, well, I’m sorry but they aren’t necessarily blessed with basic reading skills. Dick and Jane and Spot and Sally. See Spot run.

I could go on and on but for now I am waiting for what is next with Twitter.

P.S. My kids are raking the Hoton Lake leaves and this pic is from one of the web cams.

Yeah, I went off the rails yesterday but I am okay today. Yesterday’s kerfuffle wasn’t a new thing and it’ll happen again and we will carry on. (Carry on my wayward son.) I could complain that yesterday’s target was female or a person of color or an immigrant. One or two of those things are true but the aggressor also fits at least one of those categories. And by immigrant, I mean LEGAL immigrant with U.S. citizenship. But just jeebus.

But I am okay today and I’m not sure why I included that link to Kansas. It was a tangent and *that* tangent reminded me of when I was living on Seventh Street on The Planet Ann Arbor and I had started hanging out with the GG and I would often drive over to his place in Clawson(?) after work to spend the night. I had a gold colored Ford Fiesta then (a few years later it earned the title “Mama’s Little Gold Car”) and whatever rock radio station I listened to back then played Kansas among other things.

Those days were kind of a trip. I would drive M14, then merge onto I96 and then I would exit north onto the Southfield Freeway which quickly turned into a big four-lane surface street. Out to 14 mile and east to Clawson or wherever it was he lived over there in megalopolis. As busy as The Planet Ann Arbor can be I am so glad I convinced the GG that we needed to live here. I don’t think it took much convincing actually plus by that time, he had a job over here at That Darn EPA.

Oh! I just remembered how many times I got gas at a Shell station on 14 Mile when I was returning to The Planet Ann Arbor and the friendly Black man who would pump my gas when I was too lazy to do it myself. I guess in those days I had more time to sit back and let somebody else do my work? Nowadays I am like I will pump my own gas so I can get in and outta here quickly. Of course I’m not sure self-pump was ubiquitous quite yet? But I liked that guy. He’s probably dead now? Sigh.

I am glad the GG agreed to live with me on The Planet Ann Arbor. It is a great place to bring up children. I crack up when he complains about their political opinions and they come right back with, “Well DAD, YOU brought us up in Ann Arbor.” Yes. Yes he (we) did. Note that there are MAGAts here too but it is a pretty big blue bubble.

Oh, the pic is friends of the GG in a horse-drawn carriage in Wisconsin. He is having a good time and so am I.

After four or five days of beautiful “Indian Summer”, when I could sit outside in the afternoon, I finally had to turn on the furnace this afternoon. It was warm this morning but took a bit of a dive this aternoon. I set the thermostat to 66 but I’ll turn it down to 62 before I crash out. Lots of leaves came down today but more will be falling in the next few weeks.

The constructive criticism thing is related to a rather contentious meeting at TeleCubelandia this morning. Our meetings are rarely contentious. This is probably the most respectful group of people I have ever had the pleasure of working with. I don’t EVER feel as if I am not listened to because I am female, for example. And yes, I HAVE been at the butt end of discrimination and unwanted sexual advances in my life. I am a woman. That’s par for the course for us. But we won’t go there tonight.

I won’t detail the meeting. It was what it was and the contentious person is a known quantity. If I am the target, as I sometimes am, I can let it go. I mean, I have successful adult children, I have buried my only sibling and both my parents, followed by a few years of hostile lawyer shitola from my sibling’s widow for reasons I still don’t understand. In other words, I’ve been in the world a while and I’m more than a little jaded.

So I don’t normally give a crap about office crapola but today the crapola was directed toward someone else and that person was doing their best at a new responsibility and did not deserve aggressive criticism. A long-time manager did their best to mitigate the situation and I (not a manager) jumped in to support them and it got calmed down. Still I spent the whole afternoon thinking about what went down and how to maybe get ahead of this in the future. But who am I kidding? I doubt things will ever change much. Whatever. This is a first world problem. Or is it?

G’night, KW

So I don’t have a pic of my co-worker today but there is a pic of *her* co-worker. That would be meeeee. But it’s an ugly, not that I care but I’m not gonna post it.

My Detroit beach urchin is here for an overnight but rather than work in town here for the day, she telecommuted from home, drove over here, and finished the day telecommuting from The Landfill.

We managed to cobble together a dinner (together). Chicken thighs with what could have been a better glaze but yer fav-o-rite blahgger got lazy ad didn’t cook it down. Lentil/squash salad and tabbouleh. The lentil/squash salad had a dressing that included pomegranate molasses. I googled that ingredient and found that it isn’t related to the molasses we all know and love in any way shape or form. Nevertheless, I found it next to the regular old molasses at the plum. I suspect they figured that’s where people would look for it and indeed that is where I looked for it.

We watched the movie Catherine Called Birdy during and after dinner. Once “we” (aka she) figured out which remote control did what. I have long ago given up on that. And that is about all for tonight.

Love y’all, KW

I am sooo taaaared tonight. There’s nothing to write home about. Just work and at the end of work, I hung out in the back yard until the sun started setting. Indian Summer temps today and for a few more days. This accidental photo cracked me up more than it deserved to. I don’t remember taking it but I had stopped in the middle of a slooooow road to get a tree pic and somehow I got an additional pic of the steering wheel and dashboard without knowing what I was doing. That yellow thing is a “trouble” light but it is one that I turn on ON PURPOSE because if I do not, Cygnus notifies me when I am out of my “lane”. Believe me, if I am ever out of my lane, it is for a good reason. I have said that before.

Most of the trees around here still have leaves but I love those that do not. Like these that I came across on Liberty Road.

A little further west on Liberty, I came across a fancy farm facility and realized that I had once gone to a college graduation party there. It was fine but it was a little weird.

I took classes with the graduate’s mom at WCC. We were friends and at the time she lived in Dexter and we met for breakfast once a week. We got to be breakfast friends after an awkward situation. We were both taking a project management class. I had to be late to a class because we were dropping off our mouse at college that day. Her first year. I had told the prof but my classmate didn’t know about it and when I arrived (late), she and the prof were outside the room and she was freaking out that there wasn’t a project manager for our group. I immediately jumped in and explained that *I* had volunteered to be the project manager and why I was late.

I *always* volunteered to be the project manager for college class group projects. I figured nothing would ever get done if I didn’t and I wanted a good grade. Once I managed from “behind”. A talented high school student wanted to do it because it would enhance her grade so I shared it with her. In my adult career, I stay totally away from project management and just dooooo my job. Go figure.

Of all things, my friend’s daughter was a high school senior that year and one of the colleges she was looking at was the one my daughters went to and OF ALL THINGS her daughter ended up at Kzoo too. So we had something in common.

We met for breakfast once a week while we were still at WCC together and then for a couple years after I began my job at Cubelandia. She and her husband moved to Arizona (he is or was a doc) for a while and they are now back in the area but we haven’t really connected again. And that’s okay. I am not a social butterfly and most of my friends are people who find me and persist with cultivating a friendship. She did that with me but I think our lives went in different directions for a while. You never know though.

Oh yes, there was a birthday today. You know who you are 🧡🧡🧡

Like October on The Planet Ann Arbor can be, at least early in the morning, which was when I took this pic a few days ago. The day after that Old Man Winter sent a little warning to us. It was 39 degrees and I could barely tell there were snowflakes but yes. It’s coming.

Today? 70-something degrees? Something like that. BFF and JCB did a bit of a drive-by on their way from their yooperland cabin to their main residence down south and we got takeout food from HOMES Brewery. There was a bit of an ordering kerfuffle because they are apparently not equipped to take orders over the phone so you have to use a third-party app. JCB insisted on driving over for the pickup. I had been obsessing off and on all morning about having to do it myself. I don’t know why stuff like that makes me nervous, it isn’t even covid at this point. I shouldda known JCB would insist on doing it. Thanks and whew!

We could’ve eaten *at* HOMES. They do have outdoor seating but I figured mid-day on a Saturday (and not even a football Saturday) would be crowded and it was much more comfortable to sit out in the Landfill back yard. Eating at restaurants is exhausting for me these days, even with warm weather and outdoor seating.

I watched a couple more episodes of Westworld, which I started the last time the GG was outta town. I am enjoying it even though I don’t totally understand it yet. It’s from a Michael Crichton book but I can’t find the book and for various reasons I can’t articulate, I’m thinking the TV series might be better. So often it’s the other way around. BTW it is VERY violent, mostly gunshots and blood, etc. That’s all I will say but if it sounds interesting, I suggest researching it a bit, not blindly jumping in.

The GG (yesterday): Did I get any mail today?

KW: No

Epilogue (today): Oh ho! An absentee ballot arrived!

If you are one of my five reglear nucular taggers aka readers, you might know that I voted a couple weeks ago. I wasn’t sure if the GG was gonna vote or not. He will not be in town (I don’t think) on Election Day but he has voted in person even during the pre-vaccine 2020 presidential election. Note that the Great Lake State voted to allow people to optionally vote absentee for ANY reason WELL before covid and the Orange Baboon’s election “stealing” shitola. Election fraud was not a hot issue then, it was more about providing access to voting for people who, for whatever reason, could not easily get to their in-person polling place. Well before all of the voting trumpola, the GG did vote absentee when we would be out of town or whatever.

I imagine at the state level we’ve probably canceled each other’s votes out. There AIN’T NO WAY I would vote for Tudor Dixon for dogcatcher, let alone governor! Go Big Gretch! (Note that I do not know if the GG will vote for Tudor Dixon but I don’t think he much likes Big Gretch.)

Locally I think we are a bit more on the same page. There is a huge push to make our city “green” within a short number of years. I am ABSOLUTELY FOR green energy and bike lanes and all of the other stuff. What gives me pause is that there doesn’t seem to be a plan, other than a high-level overview. High-level overviews are FINE. BUT.

I have some small experience with this. When I started my adult career, our product was largely running on ancient technology. Think mainframes and green screens if you have been in the tech industry for a long time. Our application is now TOTALLY on them thar intertubes. It took 15 years and we had to eat an elephant to do it. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And we did. We picked away at various little pieces all those years. Sometimes we had to backtrack or refactor or whatever. We did all of this with NEGLIGIBLE downtime for our customers. We are STILL adding little bits and pieces of customized functionality for our customers.

I do not see that our city is eating an elephant, at least not one bite at a time.

I dropped my ballot into the Vet’s Park drop box on a beautiful Sunday morning a few weeks ago and here is the e-sticker I chose when my ballot was received.

A fellow blahgger posted about some problems with a late model Toyota, a similar model to Mooon Yooonit except it’s hybrid where ours is gas only. We’ll talk about that some other day. Or not.

This was a steering problem and apparently it isn’t related to fluid, unlike the time my crappy old POC had a problem with steering where fluid was involved. What happened then was that a whole bunch of the family was at the moomincabin. My mouse was a newly licensed driver and the plan was she and her younger cousin Pengo Janetto would go to town in the POC in search of I fergit what. I settled myself down on the beach to do my moom new-driver type worrying… I didn’t have to worry very long. After a couple minutes, “Moom, the POC makes a funny noise when I turn the steering wheel.” A squealy noise. Oh dear.

I was envisioning difficult conversations over the phone with the GG (don’t ask) and woman-type conversations with male mechanics. Fortunately, none of that happened. Because. MY BROTHER WAS THERE! Someone is having car problems? That kind of thing always excited my auto engineer brother and he SWUNG into action. Within the next half hour or so, we were at the Chrysler dealer and it was fixed in pretty short order. All I had to do was pay for it. Another time he eyeballed my tires on that vee-hickle and took it in to UP Tire to replace them. Of course I had to pay for that too 🐸 (not that I didn’t expect to). I hate dealing with car problems and was always happy to let my brother do it if the stars aligned in that direction.

I miss that old boy. We had plenty of sibling issues but we loved each other.

The POC never left me stranded on the side of the road but it was one problem after another with that vee-hickle. The first pic is from a blueberry picking trip with a bunch of beach folks at Betchler Lakes. It was a good day for the POC. The second pic is after a big thunderstorm knocked a tree on our house and the POC. A few years before that it was hit by a tornado while we were northbound on the I75 SUV Speedway.

The POC was the last vee-hickle we bought from an American company. We’ve bought Honda, Toyota, and Subaru since then. Note that buying Japanese vee-hickles does NOT always mean the cars are manufactured in Japan. Ours were made in the US, Canananada (I think?), and maybe a couple in Japan. I’m not sure where Cygnus was built but I love her.

The one where you are realizing that you need to stock up on [too much] Halloween candy and then you turn around twice and it’s Thanksgiving with xmas chomping at its heels and if you are meeeeee, another gdam bday follows shortly after the new year. Hopefully it won’t be a COVID bday this year.

For various reasons, one of the beach urchins has been spending approximately one night a week here in the Landfill. She lives 45 minutes away but has changed jobs to the planet and although she can (and does) work remotely, she likes to spend a couple days in her office, which is not jam-packed with people. A move may be in the foreseeable future but there is no rush (i.e., remote work) and it’s up to her what she does about that. I’m just a moom, not a real estate agent.

I have not totally adjusted to this new version of reality so I didn’t check with her ahead of time about scheduling and didn’t have a dinner plan for tonight. It was okay. She was wavering about whether or not to visit anyway. In the end, she did come over and cooked us a loverly chard/sausage soup. I made garlic bread as a complement. I am starting to get used to the idea that she likes cream in her coffee and have that on my grock list as a standing item just in case. And I cook bacon for breakfast!

Bat tights from Snag Tights. I also have some in a loverly ectoplasmic green color.

I dunno. I posted a pic of meeee and the Twinz of Terror on facebook tonight from last Friday when we were in the Cozy Room porterzooming. I tagged both of the twinz in the photo. I have gotten sooooo many likes, etc. to that pic I can’t even believe it. Yes. The twins look great! A few of my commenters say my hair looks like mermaid hair but it is more white than the blonde that it looks like in the photo. But I do have a lot of hair and apparently it is a bit curly, at least at the ends.

I actually prefer my hair shorter. Like a Mom Bob but my Detroit hair cutter girl hates that term. I need to get to her sooner than later if she is still in business. I was getting around to it when omicron hit and I got f*cking omicron and that just knocked the crapola out of me for doing anything for a while, including driving to Detroit. Again, I was not sick, it was more of a psychological thing.

I am about at the end for tonight so this is just to say I love y’all and g’night.

For random reasons, I was surfing around my old community college website. The college I began classes at like, when was it? Going on 20 years ago. A non-traditional student. I was thinking I could find photos of that experience but OF COURSE they don’t exist. I had an old-fashioned flip phone then. I’m not even sure it took photos and I didn’t take my digital cam to class. So you get an artifact from around that time instead, which is The Indefatigable in its last years of life.

My program was called Internet Professional and it was pretty darn rigorous. One of my first classes was Web User Experience I and guess what? I had to write papers! Mostly little 1- or 3-page papers but a lot of them! But guess what? Mr. Pfifer taught me how to write a 3-page paper in Soo High 12th grade honors English. Best lesson ever. Say what you’re going to say, say it, and say what you said. Other people in my classes struggled. Heck, some other people struggled to READ. I couldn’t believe how many people came in with their first assigned paper and HADN’T PRINTED IT BEFORE CLASS!

I am not one of those warm fuzzy maternal types but I do care about people who may have less than I do in any way. I didn’t take people under my “wing” or “help” them with their classwork but I tried my best to support and encourage others who didn’t already have a college education and/or a whole bunch of life experience under their belt. If I was working with them on something anyway. I did not seek these folks out.

On the other hand, certain people I didn’t really suffer. Like the arrogant php guy in a javascript class who took every opportunity to discuss how great php was vs. javascript and tout his vast experience. One night he was going on and on and I turned around in my seat in the front row (he was also in the front row) and flashed my brother’s old shit-eatin’ trombone grin at the folks behind me. The one he used when he was in community band situations and had to play second fiddle to some crapola player*. Later that night a woman (who DID struggle with the class) came up to me and said (and meant it), “You are soooo funny!”

We’ll talk some other day about the time the guy with the stars ‘n’ stripes hat came in halfway through class apparently higher than a kite, passed out peanut M&Ms to all the WOMEN in the class, then proceeded to tell the guy next to him that he had been Excalibur (yes, the sword) in a previous life. The prof called him out to the hall and he did not return. If he’s still alive, I can only guess he’s a huge MAGAt and yes I ate the M&Ms.

I think I finished one certificate. Before I could finish any others, I got dumped into Corporate America and here I still am, still pinching myself.

Anyway I was looking around at today’s programs and classes and my two main teachers are STILL THERE! They are great teachers who don’t put up with any crapola and I LOVE them! Cheers!

*My brother was a GOOD trombone player although his career was auto engineer.

Actually the first order of business is that I. Made. Overnight. Oats! The beach urchins make them and they have fed them to me at the moomincabin. This is the first time I have made them. I made a cranberry/orange version and they were TO DIE FOR! Almond milk and a wee bit of honey and vanilla and I fergit what else. I squeezed two clementines for the orange juice.

I dunno why I procrastinated so long. Once I forced myself into putting it together I think it took me about five minutes. I didn’t have a mason jar around (a good container for overnight oats) so I used a tall plastic tumbler with Saran Wrap on top and wedged it into the fridge door in such a way that it couldn’t spill unless the fridge tipped over. I wanna try a cherry version next but I might need to buy frozen cherries because the cherry season is LONG over.

It was a gorgeous October day and we eventually launched on a drive out on the slow gravel roads, where you don’t have to worry about traffic backing up behind you. You don’t have to go very far out of the Planet Ann Arbor to get to the countryside. We have fall color but it is not all that vibrant this year. I think that’s because we haven’t had a lot of rain. Everything has a brownish tinge to it and looks almost wilted. The powers that be keep predicting rain and even thunderstorms but we mostly get little bits of drizzle. When we started our drive, it was almost blindingly bright but an hour later, clouds were moving in.

The GG is planning yet another trek on the north country trail with our friend Joan, this time in Wisconsin, but we are together this weekend. Pyro that he is, he set up a nice faaaar in the backyard and we sat out there for a couple hours. Just about when we were packing it in, a woodpecker managed to get itself into one of our birdhouses. It peeked its head out and it absolutely looked like it was eyeballing the GG. What could it have been thinking? I do not know.

It was kind of a crappy, slodgy day at least for me. No real reason why but I did NOT get up as early as I wanted to and life kinda slodged along from there. I did NOT go to the farmers market but that was because there is so much road construction surrounding it, it’s hard to get there plus we didn’t really need anything.

The Twinz of Terror went out for breakfast at a restaurant. I did not. I went to the Plum and then ate leftover shrimp-fried rice from last night. I am sorta done with arguing about indoor dining as covid continues to ravage our community, local and global. The Twinz were not impressed with the service. Really? This restaurant was wonderful pre-covid and we ate there many times but I think it is struggling “post”-covid (not) like many others are. Is it simply that they can’t retain good help? Maybe. But I think it’s more complicated than that. Some people seem to be whooping it up at restaurants now that we are “post”-covid (not). I just get exhausted.

Football didn’t exactly rule the afternoon but I am happy that certain people are actually watching it again and not grumping about knees and things. The TV in the back room was on all afternoon although at a low volume. UMich won again. If I have it right, our home team is having a good year. I heard but did not see the fighter jets that scrambled for the UMich game. Y’know, our military pilots have to practice so why not fly over the Planet Ann Arbor. MooU managed to pull out ahead of, um was it Wisconsin? The GG was kinda pacing through that. USC is in the TV screenshot and here is part of the USC marching band joining Fleetwood Mac on stage sometime waaaay back in history. Be warned there are one or two ads.

There was a summer when that Fleetwood Mac CD looped in my old POC’s CD player. Driving the then teenage beach urchins around. One day we were driving to town and the grandparents were pottering along 6-mile road. I’ll never forget the look on their faces when I swooshed around them in the POC. I rarely pass people on 6-mile but I HAD to do that. Note that I am more of a potter-along-er on 6 mile these days. And I am more likely listening to NPR although, AGAIN, that is not where I get my political opinions.

I cooked a chicken succotash dish tonight. I used to have a recipe for one but could not find it to save my life. It’s okay. I googled a bit and got some ideas but in the end I just made up my own. It was fine and I made biscuits to go with it. I am not great at biscuits but I can do a reasonable job.

Here we are in the Cozy Room doing Virtual Oscar Tango with our friends of porterization. Look at my covid hair 🐽 You can’t see the Porters because our free Zoom session had just timed out. I think we need to switch back to FaceTime but who am iiiii?

The UU called me an Egghead this afternoon. I cracked up. Yes, I am an egghead. When I was a teenager that’s just about the last thing I wanted to be called. All I wanted was to be cooooool and have a boyfriend, etc. Well, I did have a couple of boyfriends during those years but I was never really cooooool as a high school kid.

What I was, was an egghead. Like practicing flute/piano for hours on end. The flute (my major instrument) practicing started with tone exercises, then Taffanel-Gaubert Exercices (scales/arpeggios etc.), then some etudes, and then whatever repertoire I was working on or just playing through because I loved it all so much. Bach, Telemann, French virtuoso stuff, esoteric 20th century stuff, and whatever else.

I did math stuff too, like working through my dad’s ANCIENT analytical geometry book PLUS taking every math class I could my hands on. That stopped before calculus in my high school, which I longed to study. I did take Calc 1 in college. I aced it but at that point, spending time on both math and music was not compatible with getting enough sleep (and partying 🐽).

I am a “retired” musician but I have spent my adult life in and out of the computer biz. During my boring Childhood Career, which began with me pulling people’s printouts off a “Data 100” printer, I taught myself Fortran… … … In my non-boring Adult Career I don’t hand people their printouts. In fact I rarely even use printers any more.

I wouldn’t call myself popular these days but there are probably people who might argue with me and I have had my moments. I hereby PROUDLY proclaim myself an egghead. It’s a badge of honor that I wish I could’ve embraced as a teenager. Women can do ALL kinds of jobs including techie type things. I am one of them. Let’s go girls. We are cooooool!

It was one o’ them thar things where I had to put alert statements in a javascript file to try to figure WTF was going on. In the end, it was a css issue. Some birdbrain (actually probably meeeee) had hacked in a work-around at some point. It was time to FIX IT! And I did! Right at the end of my work day. Yay for me!

How do I [love to] hate facebook? Let me count the ways. Before the Orange Baboon Bombasty it was because people were constantly sharing articles but pretty obviously not READING them except for the headline. Clickbait. After TFG WON, I ran across a Huffpo article with a headline about how Bernie could still be prez. I knew that was totally wrong but I read it anyway. And after a couple leading sentences about Bernie, OF COURSE, he could not become prez and the article went on to discuss how to evaluate news articles for factual information. I rarely share anything but I did share this but also wrote that I had READ the article before sharing it. Did I convince anyone to stop monkey clicking and READ and THINK? Probably not.

Nowadays the political crapola has toned down and I for one am happy that social media sites have cracked down a bit on what a lot of people are calling “free speech”. I am still scratching my head about what “free speech” really means to the various folks who bandy the phrase about willy-nilly. I do know that it needs to come with some level of personal responsibility. Nowadays what I am getting spammed with are promoted links to all kinds of crapola. Some of it even looks interesting (historical stuff, etc.) but if I am really interested in something, I independently google it because every time I click on something from facebook, I get inundated with MORE crapola. Nope.

Last night facebook was actually fun for once. I was mindlessly scrolling along waiting for my brain to settle down enough for sleep. An adult daughter was sitting next to me and she asked, “Moom, who is that?” Well. That is so-and-so and his husband. And *that* (another person) is the guy who “stole” the John Philip Sousa high school band award that I had coveted for years *and* his dad made the pottery that The Commander collected and we all love so much. And one of that guy’s (again, another person) older brothers died in Viet Nam and I went to his other older brother’s wedding with my then boyfriend and *that* brother was in a band called the Renaissance Fair and he’s dead now too but he didn’t die in Nam. And on and on. It was fun telling stories and it’s a good thing I am not friends with any ex-boyfriends on facebook.

Photo credit to mouse because I did not take any photos today. In fact I didn’t leave the Landfill except to snag what passes for a newspaper (twice a week), take the trash/recycle carts out, and dump the compost.

Himself is home and it was not particularly calm around here today.

First, the goddamn thermostat wars began early. I mean it was close to 60 degrees outside this morning but heeeee was “cold” and wanted to “take the edge off”, whatever the edge is. I kept sneaking the thermostat down to 64 and heeeee kept turning it back up to 66. I finally shed some of my clothing, which were great for walking in pitch black and drizzle this morning but were waaaaay too hot with the furnace blasting.

I have to admit that I was caught out last Friday with the furnace completely turned off in 47 degree weather. And I will admit that IIIII was indeed cold and using a lap blanket to stay warm. Once someone politely asked me to please turn up the thermostat, I realized that IT WAS TOTALLY OFF! Yes yes yes OF COURSE I will turn it on. Jeebus, what an idjit I am. I turned it up to almost 70, the highest setting in years, if not ever. When we first moved here, we had a different gas meter. It was inside the dungeon and it would start SQUEAKING every time the furnace was about to faaaar up. IT DROVE ME NUTS! I adore central heating when it’s needed but I sleep better at a lower temperature. And without any squeaking.

I spent the day deeeeep in a rabbit hole, surfacing when the GG was making noise and also to prep a Finfam Steak Dinner in five minute increments. Marinate the steak. Back to work. Peel and cut up potatoes and set them up to slow boil. Back to work. Mash them and put them in a casserole dish to keep warm. Back to work. Prep asparagus and scallions to saute. Back to work. Cut up mushrooms and red onion to saute. Needed Onion Goggles and a post-chop face wash for that chore. Back to work.

At the end of the day the UU and Lizard Breath arrived for dinner. ‘hattans (and dinner of course) and much discussion ensued. We don’t all agree upon polly-ticks and/or the current state of the world but we managed to have good discussions tonight. I attribute that mainly to Switzerland aka my very poised daughter. Where did she get that from? Not meeeeee.

The pic is from 10 years ago on a day we drove to the yooperland from Gaylord. I remember some of the roads were a bit icy when we left Gaylord that morning but the I75 SUV Speedway was fine and this is what was on the beach when we got to the moomin.

kkkkkkkkkk. It drives me nuts when people leave a room and do not turn off the lights. I think I have left a light on ONCE in the last couple weeks and it was in the dungeon so I didn’t notice it right away.

It drives me nuts when people take showers and then put on dirty, smelly shirts. We have modern laundry facilities here. If it stinks put it in the laundry basket. Do not put it back on. Jeebus 😵‍💫 I guess maybe after a four-day backpacking trip you may have lost your sense of smell? Either that or you picked up covid (again) somewhere along the way. Probably not on the backpacking trip but some people at the “celebration” *were* covid-positive. Anyway.

If I had known that eggs and apples and other things would be coming home this afternoon, I probably wouldn’t have bought them this morning. I’m not sure what else is in the refrigimatator and I don’t think I want to look right now. It actually doesn’t seem all that bad this time as near as I can tell.

So Himself is home for better or worse and even for lunch, that is if he wants to forage for lunch at the Landfill.

That is about all. G’night, KW

P.S. As far as I know, no one here IS covid positive. No symptoms in any event.